BMW is making a concerted effort to reduce its carbon footprint. Electrified vehicles form a large part of this drive, but the company needs to do more and is therefore turning to poop for power.
The automaker’s purchasing chief Markus Duesmann stated, at a recent UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, that BMW has committed to source all its electricity from renewable sources by the end of this decade.
This according to Bloomberg includes a sourcing energy from a biomass plant in South Africa that runs on cow dung and chicken droppings. The facility in Rosslyn, Pretoria was the company’s first foreign plant and assembles the 3 Series sedan.
Its plant in Leipzig, Germany is lareley powered by wind turbines, and the plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina gets methane power from a nearby landfill.
“When it comes to sustainable responsibility, we consider the entire value chain, from purchasing and production to the product and our mobility services as a comprehensive system of lifecycles,” said Duesmann. “Today, we already obtain 63% of our purchased electricity from renewable energies. And I’m proud to announce today that our new goal for the year 2020 will be 100%!”